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Monday, 22 June 2015

Rambling On: An Apprentice's Guide to the Gift of the Gab - Bohumil Hrabal (translated by David Short) - 2015 Best Translated Book Award

As I mentioned in my review of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel “Harlequin’s
Millions”, also a contender for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, Hrabal is
considered, by many, to be one of the best Czech writers of the 20th
century. “Harelquin’s Millions” was a runner up in this year’s Award with the
judges mentioning “the wonderful lyricism of its winding sentences”. The work I
review today is a collection of short stories, nineteen in all, published by
Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press.

The book contains an afterword by Vaclac Kadlec and “Translator’s
Notes” by David Short where the history of these stories and the lyricism and
challenges of translation are explained. Our stories are from the 1970’s and it
is actually his last collection of short stories. A number of these stories
were omitted from the original publication with a number of them also reworked.
Submitted in early 1975 it was three years before the book finally appeared. In
this edition we are told the published have “sought to preserve the author’s
original intention” with the omitted works included and a further two removed
along with a 1972 story, “The Maid of Honour” included.

Our work begins with “The St Bernard Inn”, a tale of a dream
to take over the local inn, serve local food, furnish the place in style, but
it is told via the story of a St Bernard sitting on the patio. Welcome to the
rural world of Bohumil Hrabal and more specifically the Kersko Forest. In fact
our book contains a map of the region so we can refer to the region where the
tales take place.

“A Moonlit Night” brings the local police commandant into our
world, telling us of his keeping law and order by letting down bike tyres of
drunken citizens:

And then he took himself off with
his bike, meek and barely able to walk, it wasn’t just his tyre I’d let down,
but his soul, too, and that’s how it should be, when I’m on duty I don’t know
even my own brother, I once fined my son for parking in the wrong place, and
though he hasn’t spoken to me since, I’m quite happy talking to myself and the
Moon, the Moon hanging up there in the sky, I talk to the pine trees when they
let out their smell, these are my friends, and I can tell that ditches and
streams and ponds are my friends, I don’t care for others any more, I don’t
want to know them. I’m a loner. So I sat down, the Moon sat on my lap like some
girl or other, I held out my arms and the moon-light licked my hands like a
kitten, or a police dog.

Our stories reveal the characters of Kersko , their intricate
details, their fears and their idiocyracies. “Mr Methie” is a story about a man
who collects worthless bargains, like pairs of shoes with two left feet “Not
buy a thing when it’s a real bargain?” A book where we revisit the place “where
time stands still”.

“A Feral Cow” tells of a stray dog who had taken up home in
a dairy barn and as the dog is causing problems it is shot, frightening a cow,
who escapes into the forest. The local law enforcement officer (our narrator in
this tale) decides to hunt the now feral cow:

I’ll call the hunters together,
because I’m one too, a fully paid-up member of the hunt, and we’ll shoot the
cow, having tracked it down first, because a feral cow might start attacking
people and man is the measure of all things, not only notionally, but also for
real, and doubly so in our own time, when all other comrades and I, we guard
the substance of socialism against the foe, even if that foe turns out to be a
feral cow.

A collection which is a scathing attack on communism, the
struggle of the locals, all told though through simple tales, with only a
smattering of the daily problems, written in a serious tone but dripping with
sarcasm.

We have recurring characters, we have the recurring theme of
meeting at the local inn or pub for a drink (or twenty) and the comraderie of
the region, the care called Kersko:

Kersko Forest is so deep that, as
legendary Czech wrestler Gustav Frištenský tells us, a black member of his
professional Graeco-Roman group got lost in it and Frištenský never saw him
again, as he says in his Memoirs.

Our characters are all full of life, including wheelchair
bound friends who celebrate the mundane but don’t take offense when refused
entry into the pub, we have Hungarian salamis that can’t be left long enough to
fine as they are consumed too quickly, wild boar hunting, goulash, innumerable
pork slaughters and dishes:

From six o’clock onwards the sole
pre-occupation of any true man of Kersko and its forests is to spend a pleasant
evening over a pint in the pub, and all the banter and chit-chat, the arguments
and imbecilities are a brilliant way to unwind from our daily tribulations, so
our serenity is fully restored and as we cycle home at night we’re on a par
with a newborn child, though that only on the assumption that mine host has
been good to us.

Generally the stories are a single paragraph, although
twenty odd pages in length, and the traditional long winding sentences remain. At
times I did find the translation a little clunky (“I was sitting by an open
window, deeply engrossed and without not a single reason to be doing anything..”),
however the notes at the end of the book did assist explaining Hrabal’s regular
use of invented words, love of alliteration, and other idiosyncrasies which
could explain the ‘stop/check/re-read/check/give up’ reading I had at times.

It is also a patchy collection with the later works being
very experimental in style and having a preoccupation with the writer’s own
death. I much preferred the earlier stories of simple characters and
interactions in the inns, rather than the mythical chasing of women on bicycles
with fake diamond pedals, muses with white felt hats and no teeth leaving a
doorstep as a gift.

Our book is also beautifully bound, includes a vast collection
of colour illustrations by Jiri Grus. Enjoyable, a tad patchy, a large number
of gems but a few unpolished rocks, all in all a worthy inclusion on the Best Translated
Book Award longlist, but not as strong as Hrabal’s other book on the list, nor
am I outraged that it didn’t make the shortlist.

1 comment:

For a long time I was able to say I'd read everything in English by Hrabal but in recent years it's been coming thick and fast (in the US anyway). I believe New Directions have a Hrabal short story collection coming soon as well, but I think I'll start with Harlequin's Millions.